The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that 90,473,00 Americans age 16 or older are not in the labor force. This is the highest number of unemployed since they have been collecting this data.

Our unemployment rate hovers just above 7%, but this number fails to tell the whole story. Last month we were told that the number of unemployed dropped by 115,000. But that’s not because they all found jobs. It’s because the number of the overall workforce dropped by almost three times that amount.

Friend of Liberty Trail, Max, linked to an article from Byron York yesterday in his comment, and we need to look closely at it. York tells us that more than 100 large corporations doing business in America have sent a joint letter to congressional leaders urging them to pass the immigration bill being considered. From the article:

A new immigration law, the corporate officers say, “would be a long overdue step toward aligning our nation’s immigration policies with its workforce needs at all skill levels to ensure U.S. global competitiveness.” The officials cite a publication of their trade group, the HR Policy Association, which calls for immigration reform to “address the reality that there is a global war for talent.” The way for the United States to win that war for talent, they say, is more immigration.

But York goes on to tell us about all the layoffs happening in the very same companies who are signatories of this letter.

Hewlett-Packard, whose Executive Vice President for Human Resources Tracy Keogh signed the letter, laid off 29,000 employees in 2012. In August of this year, Cisco Systems, whose Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Kathleen Weslock signed the letter, announced plans to lay off 4,000 — in addition to 8,000 cut in the last two years. United Technologies, whose Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Organization Elizabeth B. Amato signed the letter, announced layoffs of 3,000 this year. American Express, whose Chief Human Resources Officer L. Kevin Cox signed the letter, cut 5,400 jobs this year. Procter & Gamble, whose Chief Human Resources Officer Mark F. Biegger signed the letter, announced plans to cut 5,700 jobs in 2012.

Those are just a few of the layoffs at companies whose officials signed the letter. A few more: T-Mobile announced 2,250 layoffs in 2012. Archer-Daniels-Midland laid off 1,200. Texas Instruments, nearly 2,000. Cigna, 1,300. Verizon sought to cut 1,700 jobs by buyouts and layoffs. Marriott announced “hundreds” of layoffs this year. International Paper has closed plants and laid off dozens. And General Mills, in what the Minneapolis Star-Tribune called a “rare mass layoff,” laid off 850 people last year.

With a record number of Americans unemployed, big businesses are demanding that Congress import cheap labor for them.

I fear Congress and the Obama administration are more than willing to accommodate these folks. They preach to us about what a dangerous place the world is. They must violate our privacy, make war in our name, and spend obscene amounts of our tax dollars to “protect” us.

All they while they still refuse to secure our borders from foreign invaders. Our cities are overrun by violent gangs, many of whose members are here illegally. Federal bureaucracy ties the hands of local law enforcement to do anything about it. Our hospitals are crumbling under the cost of providing medical care for illegal aliens who cannot pay. Many of our school districts face the same problem. They push our welfare system to the brink.

There are the bigger dangers that come from terrorists who sneak in with the “poor farmers simply seeking a better life for their children.” No one knows who they are, where they are or when they will strike.

And now they want our jobs too. I’m a strong believer in capitalism, but this is not capitalism. This is treasonous. These big companies are ones whose donations fund the campaigns of the very politicians who will decide if cheaper payrolls trump the welfare of American citizens.

The morning of September 11, 2001 is still very clear in my mind. I remember the IM from my husband.

“Turn on TV, plane crashed into World Trade Center.”

I remember talking to my Mom on the phone right after that. She and the rest of my family still live on Long Island. Moments after we both watched the second plane hit I asked (somewhat childishly) “Mom, what’s going on?” This was all happening way too close to her. I was afraid of what else might be coming.

I recall the chaos at my daughter’s school, as frantic parents searched for their kids, wanting to take them home and keep them safe.

I remember that fear, then the anger and then that pit in my stomach. It was nausea that lasted for days and still returns quickly with the memories.

Sometime in the following days, we collectively vowed to Never Forget. Like me, I’ll bet you haven’t. The images of fellow Americans making the choice to leap to avoid burning to death are inerasable. When you’ve seen something so unfathomable, it’s with you forever.

But what of those in charge? What about our leaders? Have they forgotten? Sometimes it seems so.

We all know Nadal Hassan is a terrorist. He yelled “Allah Akbar” as he murdered American soldiers. But it’s been officially named as “workplace violence” as though he just got out of sorts because a co-worker insulted him.

It’s a year today since our Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered in an awful, violent attack by terrorists. First our leaders lied to us and when they could no longer get away with the lie, our Secretary of State at the time, who still wants to be our president, demanded to know what difference did it make? And although the ringleader of the guilty group has been interviewed by numerous media organizations, our FBI seems unable to find him even today.

Too often it seems our leaders put their devotion to political correctness first and our security much farther down their list of priorities. Those who wish to kill us face an “overseas contingency” operation, while the full force of an overbearing government comes down on us. Yeah, sometimes it seems our leaders do remember it, but use it as an excuse to do things they would otherwise not get away with.

We are subjected to sexual assault at our airports by unqualified agents of the federal government, a practice which is now spreading to other public areas. Our privacy is invaded as our government looks at any and everything it pleases – our phone records, our financial information, medical records, emails… Unelected bureaucrats at government agencies like the IRS are charged with judging which speech is free and which needs to be restricted. People who write opinions such as the ones I often do are matters of concern.

I’m dangerous.

All the while we’re being governed by faux pas as we find ourselves in an awkward international position over Syria’s chemical weapons. An off-the-cuff remark by our president landed us here and an off-the-cuff remark by our new Secretary of State is what passes for brilliant diplomacy. The Arab world is in flux, our enemies there continue to plot against us with the support of our much larger, more dangerous, traditional enemies and our leaders are scrambling to appear credible.

But you and I remember. We haven’t forgotten. Too many of us know someone who died that day. It still makes me angry. It still makes me sick to my stomach.

And as long as we don’t forget, the vile and twisted evil of that day can never win.

The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won’t meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system.

The government does track arrivals, but is years overdue in setting up a system to track departures — a goal set in a 1996 immigration law and reaffirmed in 2004, but which has eluded Republican and Democratic administrations.

1996? But it’s 2013. That’s 17 years. And why weren’t we tracking these people even before that?

“DHS has not yet fulfilled the 2004 statutory requirement to implement a biometric exit capability, but has planning efforts under way to report to Congress in time for the fiscal year 2016 budget cycle on the costs and benefits of such a capability at airports and seaports,” GAO investigators wrote.

Oh. They’re going to report to Congress by 2016 on costs and benefits. Oh. Then what?

As the argument over the pending amnesty legislation moves forward, we’re going to hear from a lot of politicians about border security and how they’re ramping up efforts and are about to get tough.

Right.

In its official response to the GAO report, the Homeland Security Department said it is creating a working group to try to improve its data, and pointed to its success in reducing the backlog of overstay cases from 1.6 million to 1 million.

Create a working group. That sounds tough, doesn’t it?

And that number – one million they can’t account for? Well, it is down from 1.6 million. Success – government style!

Washington is full of weasels. They’ll promise you anything and then do as they please.

On Tuesday, President Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, gave us a peek into what the president would focus on in his current campaign tour.

Phony scandals? Surely Carney was joking.

But he wasn’t. Phony is exactly what Obama said the next day in an otherwise snoozer of a speech at Knox College in Illinois.

He took a lot of heat for the line. But just to be sure that no one got the wrong idea and wouldn’t assume he just chose his words poorly, he doubled down and repeated the charge yesterday while speaking to another handpicked crowd of adoring fans.

Like so many others, I’m still picking my chin up from the floor and wondering which scandals he’s referring to. Is he talking about Border Agent Brian Terry, who was killed with a Fast and Furious gun? Or the hundreds of Mexican citizens who were killed with those guns? Are they phony?

Or could he be talking about the four Americans murdered in Benghazi? Are they phony?

Maybe he meant the hundreds of conservative groups systematically targeted illegally by the IRS and prevented from participating in our political system for two election cycles.

Or perhaps he meant the reporters whose phone records were “obtained” by the Justice Department. Maybe he meant James Rosen, the FOX News correspondent who the same Justice Department falsely named as a co-conspirator in an espionage case in order to obtain access to his phone and email accounts.

Perhaps he meant the revelation that the NSA is collecting data on each and every one of us, storing it all away for some yet undisclosed purpose in the future.

Are these all phony?

Who paid any price for the death of Brian Terry? Who has paid for the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty or Ty Woods? The only person jailed was the guy who made the video. Who ordered that video be used as a cover-up? Talk about phony baloney.

Who’s investigating the IRS? The American citizens who testified before Congress about how they were targeted and abused say no one from the FBI or anyone else has contacted them.

I’m angry. Really angry. All around me, I see the lives of Americans being destroyed. Good, decent, hard-working people who have played by the rules all their lives are losing their jobs, their businesses, their homes and their life savings.

Except for a tiny handful of decent men and women, members of Congress go along to get along, spending borrowed money we can never repay, and covering up for the most outrageous and criminal behavior of those in positions of power. Their number one concern is getting re-elected and staying on the gravy train of taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, they preach to the rest of us, call us cowardly racists and just too simple-minded to understand their grand plan.

Our president sneers at our complaints, and with his signature smirk he labels them phony. He dismisses us and swats us away as one would a gnat on a hot summer day.

It’s spiraling out of control now folks. Nothing is being done about any of this. They’re simply waiting us out. They’re waiting until we get tired of asking for answers and action. Obamacare will soon hit us and that will do the job. As we all watch our healthcare system implode and find ourselves with little access to medical care we’ll realize that they even have the power to take away our health.

What’s happening is all very real. And a real price will be paid by real Americans.

They only things that are phony are the hollow words coming from our leaders.

Paula Deen spent most of last week begging for forgiveness for admitting she uttered the N-word sometime in the past.

The trial of George Zimmerman has captured the national news.

And a New Jersey mom is violently beaten in her home while her 3 year-old watches.

So is Paula Deen a racist? I don’t know. I’ve never met her. She seems nice enough. Is she the only public figure who has ever said the N-word? Certainly not.

I’m not an aficionado of rap music, but I have heard the word used by black and white rappers. They use other nasties too, usually directed at women – bitch and ho. Does that make them misogynists? Is it racist when they say the N-word? Should they grovel like Deen is doing, begging for forgiveness for their words?

And what about Zimmerman? Is he a racist? I’ve never met him either, so I don’t know. The sad truth is that the trial is about race and not about Trayvon Martin’s death. Hundreds of young, black men are killed each year (mostly in Chicago) and no one outside of their families cares very much. They don’t make the evening news except for being included in the statistics.

The sad, sad truth is that the only reason you know Trayvon Martin’s name is that his killer was not another young, black man.

Is the sociopath in the video, who beat the NJ mom a racist? Does he hate whites? Maybe he hates women. Maybe he hates white women.

Or maybe he’s just a crazy person who needs to be locked up so he can’t hurt anyone else.

Was it right for the Food Channel to cancel Paula Deen’s show? They are free to choose what they want to do as a private company, aren’t they? But should someone lose their source of income and have their reputation ruined because they admit they used a racial slur sometime in the past? Bob Bryd was a member of the Klu Klux Klan and held the office of “Exalted Cyclops.” He apologized and went on to be a United States Senator and member of the Democrat party for over 50 years.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this one. But I sure would like to meet the person who claims to be perfect.

Our elected leaders are about to pass a new immigration bill that is a disaster. It is going to cause havoc to our economy and will have a profound effect on our culture. They know all this. They are lying about the bill and making believe it’s going to be great. We all know better.

But members of Congress know that anyone who opposes the bill will be called a racist. And they so fear that label that they are willing to jeopardize the welfare of the nation to avoid it.

It’s my personal experience that relations between the races have never been better out here in the real world where most of us live. But the issues of racial divides and discrimination have been very profitable for some people – those in government and their cronies. If we are all getting along nicely, their source of wealth dries up and they don’t want that. So they go to great lengths to perpetuate the division.

There is still too much fear to stand up to the Al Sharptons and the La Razas of the world. Until we do, celebrities will be punished for their words, we’ll focus on the neighborhood watch guy instead of figuring out why young, black men keep killing each other and government will pass bad laws so that dishonest politicians can “prove” they care.

Several years ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said that we are “a nation of cowards” regarding the discussion of race in America.

I know I have been on the subject of the amnesty bill for days. But there’s a lot at stake here and I fear our leaders are about to do something that will be very destructive to the country and which they will not be able to undo. Today I just have some questions for the “gang of eight” that remain unaswered, some even unasked (by the media.)

How do you know we have 11 million illegals here? Can you prove me wrong when I say it’s more likely 20 to 30 million?

You say we need to bring these people “out of the shadows.” Well, what about those who do not come out and sign on to your plan? Wlll you look for them? If so, what will you do when you find them? Why can’t you find them now? Will you deport them? If you don’t plan on looking for those who don’t come forward, what’s the point of all this?

What about “wet foot, dry foot?” Will all people who come here illegally be treated the same or will we still have special classes of illegals?

We passed a law in 2006 that said you had to build a fence at the border. Why isn’t it done yet? Why is it part of negotiations now? Aren’t you already reguired by law to build it?

Aren’t you bound by your oath of office to protect the nation from all invaders? Why won’t you do it? Why is your main function part of negotiations? Why do American citizens have to give up anything in order to get you to do what is already your job?

You claim this law will prevent illegals from recieving federal benefits. What about state benefits? Is this a sleight of hand to fool us? Do you think we’re this stupid? Many illegals are already recieving benefits, especially those whose children have been born here. Will you take those benefits away? Will they be turned away from emergency rooms if they can’t pay? Will children here illegally attend public schools?

We’re still waiting for the enforcment of our souther border that was promised to us in 1986 when we gave amnesty to the illegals here at that time. When can we expect you to fulfill your obligation under that law?

Considering your track record, why should we believe that this time will be different and that we should trust you?

He is Kansas’ Secretary of State and is involved in the opposition to giving unreasonable rights to illegal aliens. To show their displeasure with his work, the pro-amnesty crowd bussed a mob of protesters to Kobach’s home this weekend. (Watch all the way to the end if you want to see the public busses that brought them.)

This isn’t Kobach’s workplace or a public event. This is his home. It’s where he lives with his wife and four daughters, aged 1 to 9 years old. It is where his neighbors live with their own children.

What kind of people go by the busload to the private home of someone they disagree with to intimidate them and their neighbors? This group had butterflies on their matching t-shirts and call themselves Sunflower Community Action. That all seems so happy and innocent. So why were they engaging in such thug tactics?

With just a few minutes of searching the internet, I found that Sunflower is a non-profit with 501(c)3 status. (I wonder if the IRS harassed them.) Their focus is legalization and in-state tuition for illegal aliens under the guise of “justice.”

They seem to fall under the umbrella of a larger group called National People’s Action. (Sounds rather socialist to me.) This group lists illegal immigration as one of its core issues. The other work they do sounds straight out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They also have non-profit 501(c)3 status. (Again I wonder how much scrutiny they got from the IRS.) This is the same group that mobbed Karl Rove’s home in 2004.

According to Michelle Malkin they get their funding from the Tides Foundation, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation, all who are famous for supporting the causes of far left progressives. She also found tens of thousands of dollars in grants from HUD, the EPA and the Massachusetts Dept. of Education. Those are tax dollars.

This whole issue of amnesty for illegals is presented as justice and fairness for nice people who only want to share the American dream with their hosts. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These are thugs. How else do you explain 300 of them showing up at Kobach’s home? Contrary to their claims, this was not a peaceful protest. This was intimidation in it’s purest form. They were telling Kobach, “We know where you live.”

They don’t want fairness. They want handouts – medical care, housing, food stamps and subsidized tuition. It’s all right there in black and white on their web sites. That’s their American dream.

And if you or I speak up against them we are called racists. Speak up loud enough and they’ll show up at your front door.